Yes, John Barrowman, we know you’re trying to provoke us

It’s a clever trick, really, doing something that you know is going to really hurt someone but only they will know. Like the ex of mine who had me crying in the loos at an event by saying something innocuous-sounding and casual that she knew had a devastating hidden meaning. Everyone thought I was making drama over nothing, but I knew and she knew full well what had happened.

There’s even a term for this kind of thing. It’s called dog-whistling; inaudible to some listeners, but not to those being targeted. If you are a fading star, or academic, or journalist, or anyone really who wants to court positive media attention, dog-whistling at trans people, in particular trans women, is currently a really low-risk, high-yield way to go about it.

Now, I’ll give John Barrowman the benefit of the doubt; maybe he stumbled on this trick by accident. In 2014, he used a slur that is to the trans community today a “just no” term, as awful as any slur you can possibly think of. It’s the word that many trans women, particularly marginalised trans women, hear as they are being beaten and murdered. It’s a word we all hear shouted at us on the street if we don’t appear cis, although it particularly targets trans women. It is a word that has become deeply associated with hatred and violence.

It’s a clever trick, really, doing something that you know is going to really hurt someone but only they will know.

Lots of us were Barrowman fans, Dr Who fans, Torchwood fans. We were willing him to say “gosh, I hadn’t realised how upsetting this was to people, I’m really sorry”. We were waiting to forgive him. But what did he say instead? “Lighten up.” And so many (cis) people loved him for it. Because let’s face it, if they hadn’t, his publicist would have been on the phone to him in a jiff, saying “John, you messed up here and it’s made you unpopular, you better apologise sharpish”.

The trans community didn’t love him for it, but hey, we’re less than one percent of the population and not all that many people are on our side. Many people are just looking for their confirmation bias that we are unhinged. When someone says something that doesn’t sound awful, hurtful and violent to them when it does to us, that proves how irrational we are, right? Surely it couldn’t be that trans people are right, that some things specifically harm us that don’t harm others, like a weapon that has a particular target?

Perhaps Barrowman’s agent called him and said “John, we can play this. If you do things that signal your allyship to the trans community but don’t actually rebuild relations with them, you will be the hero and we can cast the whole lot of them as the villains in your story.”

Barrowman’s gay, so most people probably don’t even understand that far from being all part of the same happy community, trans people are the much-marginalised and erased minority within the minority. Most cishet folk have no idea of the battles the trans community has gone through to get any kind of understanding, inclusion or respect from LGBTQ+ organisations and the community at large.

The trans community didn’t love him for it, but hey, we’re less than one percent of the population and not all that many people are on our side.

So maybe it was a happy accident that Barrowman had people rally around him, desperate to assure him those nasty over-sensitive trans folk were wrong in their opinion that they are better qualified to know what harms them than people who know very little about trans lives.

Perhaps that was just a mistake, but surely not this time. This time looks like pure provocation, and, predictably, people who are not trans are once again rallying the troops to defend the heroism of Captain Jack while the trans community and their actual allies hold their heads in their hands.

He put on a dress. Which is fine, by the way. Drag is fine, gender play is fine. I actually really liked the dress and he looked cute in it. I have no problem with a man in a dress. In fact, I would like to see more of it. But a man in a dress is a man in a dress. Unless there’s something Barrowman isn’t telling us, it has absolutely nothing to do with being trans. So when our hero called himself a “transgender tardis” no amount of “but the tardis is a girl and he’s a man so technically that’s right” is going to erase what that “screw you” moment meant to many in our community.

For people who care about the violence targeted at trans women, particularly trans women of colour, disabled trans women, poor trans women, in other words some of the most marginalised women on the planet, putting the word “transgender” alongside a man in a dress is not just hurtful and upsetting, it’s downright dangerous. Because it is the belief that trans women are “really men” that underlies the majority of transmisogynistic violence.

It’s really simple, how this plays out. An ally would have contacts in the trans community that will talk through the issues honestly. In other words, not just token friends who will say what pleases. An ally would hear what’s being said, and at the very least, mull it over and talk it through. A trans ally is not performing allyship for the benefit of other cis people, an ally is actually on your side.

Withstanding the strength of feeling that comes in response to harmful behaviours is part and parcel of being an ally. Because no amount of Twitterati are ever going to make you feel the way it feels to be walking in an unsafe neighbourhood, hear the “T” word and wonder if you’re going to get home alive.

And honestly, a sincere apology wipes the slate clean pretty easily. Especially if you happen to be a Dr Who star and seriously cute.

This time looks like pure provocation, and, predictably, people who are not trans are once again rallying the troops to defend the heroism of Captain Jack while the trans community and their actual allies hold their heads in their hands.

No doubt there will be no talking to the trans community, no listening, no apology from Barrowman. And we as a community will be subject to weeks of being told we’re “overly touchy” by mentioning that we are not happy about this. And we will be repeatedly told that Barrowman is our ally. I mean, there’s even a picture of him in a supportive T-shirt, so he must be, right?

There just aren’t enough good allies out there, particularly in the LGB community, where we desperately need them, so this sort of stunt is much too easy to pull off, garnering attention and praise and support at our expense.

Until we have sufficient allies, there will always be power in attacking our community. And so, uncomfortable though it is, we have to fight back. Not with our fists, but with words. With information that – repeated a thousand times – might finally be understood as true. We can’t just let stuff like this pass; we have to back each other up and say “this is not OK”.

Patiently, determinedly, but not necessarily calmly, we push back until it is no longer a comfortable and successful tactic for people to “put us in our place” or scapegoat us. Because change is never going to be comfortable or easy. There needs to come a day when it’s not okay for people who are self-titled allies to perpetuate harmful and violent ideas about trans people. When they don’t get away with it. When they apologise quickly, or deal with the consequences of not doing so. That day is not going to magically land in our laps by us meekly taking all the crap that’s thrown at us and swallowing it down like it doesn’t matter.

We as a community will be subject to weeks of being told we’re “overly touchy” by mentioning that we are not happy about this.

Much as it pains me to dance to Barrowman’s tune, it ultimately benefits us to protest against this and keep speaking up until people finally understand the issues. Because every time someone pulls a stunt like this is a chance for us to educate. We may not have Barrowman’s reach, but we can still use his slipstream to get our message out if we just hold our nerve and don’t let the “you’re not helping your cause” brigade silence us.

So thanks, John Barrowman, for presenting a teachable moment even if you yourself are unlikely to ever learn.

This broke my heart to hear John saying this stuff. I loved him in Doctor Who, and having bought AND read both of his autobiographies, to hear him talk about how great it was to be a positive representation for gay people… it’s like salt in the wound.

Your analysis feels spot on, because the defense that could then be trotted out is that “He’s celebrating the new Doctor Who! Don’t be so sensitive and drive off potential allies, we need them.”

To be honest, I think the whole “transgender tardis” thing was meant in a completely different way. In my opinion he was not talking about himself at all.
He used the dress on him to “genderbend” the tardis because of everything going on in the Doctor who fandom right now. Because people are not okay with the doctor being a woman, which is a change that John himself supports. Meanwhile, the tardis has always been a “she”. Therefore, in my opinion, he wanted to show the tardis as a man in drag, not to make fun of the trans-community.
There are so many people who cosplay and do genderbend because the character they love is not the same gender as they are, so I would say he did nothing else.
But this is just my opinion.

Honestly, if he didn’t have previous on this issue I might *almost* buy that, but as it stands, it works more as a justification after the fact. Given who he is, what he’s done, and what he knows, I cannot for one second believe he did not know this would genuinely upset people, but went ahead and did it anyway. Having a convoluted justification is not really the point here. He could easily have done the cosplay without using the word transgender, and all would have been dandy.

There is such a thing as intent – and reading into someone’s motives far enough to write a mostly unrelated article is seriously reaching. I don’t think he’s trying to vilify anyone, but this article sure wants him to be one.

Given his track record I don’t think it’s a reach at all, and given the amount of feedback he had about previous behaviours, he cannot possibly claim to have acted in innocence. He simply must have known he would upset people and went ahead and did it anyway, that’s pretty clear intent to me.

Just because someone did not “intend” harm doesn’t mean that they get off the hook for causing it. That’s like saying, “But I didn’t intend to hit you with my car so you should just ‘get over’ your injuries and the damage done to your car.” JB should have apologized to the Trans community and promised to watch his words from now on.

Can’t really comment on the dress incident, but I hadn’t heard about him using the T-word yet (I checked out of the Doctor Who fandom when Moffat took over, and I haven’t really paid attention to anything Barrowman does ever since I heard he’d (very early during the Torchwood run?) said something along the lines that he doesn’t really believe bisexual men exist…).

Just… Wow. How do you not realize that’s a vicious slur? I knew that 10 years ago, when I didn’t even know any transgender people online or was much involved in the LGBTQIA+ community at all. It’s just… like the F-word for gay men. No matter if some affected people have reclaimed it – that still doesn’t mean I as a woman get to use it, ever. If you’re not in the group directly affected by a slur, you don’t get “N-word privileges” – period. There’s no discussion about this.

But yeah, I totally share your experience that especially cis gay men and cis lesbian women are often total dicks about acknowledging that some groups might be even worse off then they are. While I as an aromantic asexual cis woman am not in any danger as trans people are, I get pretty much the same treatment when it’s about erasure and media representation. Or just, you know, L/G people believing in my existence and ‘right’ to count myself as queer. Strangely, I’ve made the experience that trans / genderqueer people (never encountered any who were outright ace-phobic) and most bisexuals are much nicer and more willing to be supportive. Thus proving once again that privilege breeds sociopathy – the more you have, the less you’re capable of caring about the feelings and endangerment of people who are lower than you on the pyramid. (See also: Trans-excluding ‘feminists’ – it’s mostly the white, middle-class, straight or lesbian women who act like that, in my experience.)

I’ve always loved John Barrowman, from Captain Jack in Doctor who and Torchwood to Malcolm Merlyn in the DCU to that small role he had in Desperate Housewives and those talent shows he did, and I was always glad to see him in a role because to me it meant good queer representation but to just wave off trans community complaints as essentially overreacting, I can no longer see him the same way. Even if he thought what he said wasn’t harmful he still should have apologised for it. As an FTM I’m not very offended at the T word but I know it is harmful for my MTF sisters. I think his response was more insulting than his slur.
He’s nothing but a TERF in my eyes now.